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Ronald Reagan, the 40^th President of the United States, was particularly well known for his economic policies. Dubbed “Reaganomics,” these polices sought to reduce government spending growth rate and government regulation, reduce federal income tax, and reduce inflation. People often debate over how successful Reaganomics were, but statistics do show several facts. By the time he left office, the unemployment and inflation rates shrunk, while the American economy grew. However, government spending increased, as did the public debt.

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In 1964, Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson ran for president against Republican Barry Goldwater with Hubert Humphrey as his Vice Presidential running mate. Johnson won in a landslide victory. He carried 44 states and 486 electoral college votes while Goldwater won 6 states and 52 electoral college votes. Additionally, Johnson's popular vote was 61% - the highest since James Monroe's 1820 re-election. Johnson's presidency is mainly known for the "War on Poverty," civil rights movement, and increased involvement in the Vietnam War, for which he garnered much criticism.

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James R. Thompson was the longest serving Governor of the state of Illinois.  The Republican was first elected in 1976 and served until 1991.  A graduate of Northwestern Law School, prior to his role as governor, Thompson served as the federal prosecutor for the state and convicted many high level politicians of corruption.  He was a popular governor and is credited with effectively handling the state’s finances by balancing the budget during a difficult national recession.  After leaving office, Thompson held high positions in private law firms, and was one of 10 members appointed to the 9/11 Commission.

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Wendell Lewis Willkie was the Republican Party's candidate for United States President in 1940. Willkie was an attorney and a longtime Democrat activist, but changed his party registration to Republican in 1939. Unlike other potential Republican nominees to run against incumbent president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Willkie favored supporting Britain and other U.S. allies in World War II. His position would change throughout the general election, and Roosevelt was elected to a third term on November 5, 1940. After the election, Willkie made two international trips as Roosevelt's informal envoy. The two later discussed forming a liberal political party once the war was over, but Willkie died in 1944 before the idea could come to fruition. 

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Thaddeus Thomson Hutcheson, Sr. (1915-1986) was a Houston attorney who became the Republican candidate in the 1957 special election to fill Senator Price Daniel’s seat when he vacated to become the Governor of Texas. Hutcheson won 23 percent of the votes, but lost to Ralph Yarborough, who was Daniel’s gubernatorial primary opponent. The 1957 election was the only political race Hutcheson would enter.

Hutcheson served in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a Lieutenant Commander assigned to the Destroyer Escort U.S.S. Swayze. He was a partner in his father’s law practice in Houston along with his older brother, Palmer Hutcheson, Jr., and cousin, Thomas Taliaferro. The firm was known as Hutcheson, Taliaferro & Hutcheson, and subsequently became Hutcheson and Grundy.

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Harry S. Truman was the Vice President for Franklin Delano Roosevelt for only four months before becoming the 33rd President of the United States following Roosevelt's death. He remained president from 1945 to 1953. He is responsible for ending World War II with Japan by utilizing atomic bombs, starting the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe's broken economy, leading the Cold War against Russia and China, and getting involved in the Korean War, among other things.

In the presidential election of 1948, Truman ran against Republican Thomas E. Dewey. His pick for Vice President was Alben W. Barkley. Truman won 303 electoral college votes to Dewey's 189, giving him a second term as president.

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Robert C. Byrd was a United States Senator from West Virginia. The cardinal on this button may be a play on Byrd's last name, or it could refer to his work with Amtrak to keep the Cardinal train route operating along the old historic Chesapeake and Ohio main line that runs through West Virginia. Byrd was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr. in 1917, but following his mother's death in the 1918 flu pandemic, he was adopted by his aunt and uncle, who changed his name to Robert Carlyle Byrd. Byrd served in the United States House of Representatives from 1953 to 1959, and in the Senate from 1959 until his death in 2010. 

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Hubert Humphrey was first elected to the United States Senate as a representative of Minnesota in 1948. Humphrey's proposal to end racial segregation was included in the Democratic party platform at the national convention in the same year. Before he became a politician, Humphrey worked in his father's pharmacy, but dreamed of becoming an academic. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1939 from the University of Minnesota followed by his master's degree from Louisiana State University in 1940, and then returned to the University of Minnesota as an instructor and a doctoral student. Humphrey then became involved in local politics and did not finish his PhD. Despite pressure from then-President Harry Truman's aides to keep civil rights issues out of the Convention in 1948, Humphrey represented a minority portion of the Democratic Party when he spoke, calling for federal legislation against lynching, stopping legal segregation in the schools of the South, and ending job discrimination based on skin color. The minority platform was adopted, and Truman was aided in his re-election bid by gaining support from black voters. 

As a Senator, Humphrey introduced the Peace Corps bill in 1957, and a bill in 1960 to establish a National Peace Agency. He was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and served as Democratic whip in the same year. Humphrey's colleagues nicknamed him "The Happy Warrior". When Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, he chose Humphrey to be his running mate against Republican Barry Goldwater. The Johnson/Humphrey ticket was elected in a landslide in 1964. Humphrey's bid for President in 1968 was unsuccessful, but he returned to the Senate in 1971, serving until his death in 1978. 

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Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1968 presidential election. Humphrey served twice as Minnesota's representative in the United States Senate, from 1949 to 1964 and again from 1971 to 1978. Before becoming a politician, Humphrey helped to run his father's pharmacy, earned a master's degree and taught political science at Louisiana State University and Macalester College. Humphrey was elected as the mayor of Minneapolis in 1945, and elected as a Senator in 1948. Humphrey was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and introduced the first initiative to create the Peace Corps. 

When Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, he chose  Humphrey to be his running mate against Republican Barry Goldwater. The Johnson/Humphrey ticket was elected in a landslide in 1964. After Johnson decided not to run for re-election in 1968, Humphrey launched his campaign and secured the Democratic Party's nomination after avoiding the primary elections against fellow Democrats Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., combined with increased opposition to the Vietnam War, were harmful to Humphrey's campaign, and he lost to Richard Nixon in the general election.